Новости за 08.10.2021

Hungary and Poland have vetoed an EU strategy paper on children's rights in their latest blow against the rights of sexual minorities.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief and former World Bank head and EU commissioner Kristalina Georgieva is fighting to keep her IMF job after a US law firm, WilmerHale, accused her of massaging figures in a Word Bank report, called Doing Business 2018, to make China look more investible than it was. Georgieva's lawyers rejected the report as "unsupportable", but the IMF board will hold talks on her future on Friday.

A US special-operations unit and a contingent of marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, US officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island's defences, as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts, the Wall Street Journal writes. The report came as Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen said Friday that it would "do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life".

"We need more clarity from the Chinese ... on when they're going to peak out with emissions, what their plans are with coal-fired power generation in China," EU climate commissioner Frans Timmermans said at a conference Thursday, ahead of the 'Cop 26' climate summit at the end of the month. "We hope China will join us in this effort to have serious enough reductions," US climate envoy John Kerry added.

Green NGO ClientEarth has warned the EU Commission it would be against EU law to classify gas as a 'green' fuel, in its upcoming rules on 'taxonomy', which are meant to steer private investors towards climate-friendly firms. "If it were adopted, this is likely to increase investments in activities utilising natural gas and would be in total contradiction with the commitments undertaken by the European Commission," it said, Reuters reports.

Poland's Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that parts of EU treaties were incompatible with the Polish constitution, in a major escalation of the rule-of-law dispute between Warsaw and Brussels.

Interior ministers from 12 member states are demanding the EU finance border-wall projects to stop migrants entering through Belarus, in a further push towards a fortress Europe.

Britain has joined Ukraine in accusing Russia of "choking off" Europe's gas supplies to bully German regulators into letting it run a new gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, as a monopoly. "Although Nord Stream 2 will not directly impact the UK's energy security, it could have serious implications for central and eastern European countries," a Downing Street spokesman said Thursday, adding that Russian gas-dependence raised "serious concerns about energy security."

Rwanda's conviction of politician Paul Rusesabagina, who is known as a genocide-era hero from the film Hotel Rwanda "was "exemplary of the human rights violations in Rwanda" and should be overturned, 660 MEPs said in a non-binding resolution Thursday. Rusesabagina, now a Belgian and US national, was kidnapped on a flight to Burundi last year, forced to confess (MEPs said), and sentenced to 25 years for terrorist offences last month.

The EU Commission will finalise measures next week which could lead to a resolution of post-Brexit trading issues in Northern Ireland by the end of the year or early 2022, commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič said Thursday. The measures focus on customs checks, finding long-term solutions on food and plant safety, and the supply of medicines from Britain, Reuters reported. The Northern Ireland protocol would, however, not be renegotiated, Šefčovič said.

A 100-year old man went on trial in Germany on Thursday, accused of being an accessory to murder for serving as a Nazi SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin during World War II, AP reported. The defendant, who was identified only as Josef S., is charged with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder, and is alleged to have worked at Sachsenhausen between 1942 and 1945.

MEPs raised the alarm over security challenges emerging in the Arctic, in particular the military build-up of Russia and the increasing investments of China in the region - ahead of the new EU Arctic policy, expected next week.

Collective expulsions of people seeking asylum violates the European Convention of Human Rights. At least 14 reports of collective expulsions in Lithuania have been lodged by officers from the EU's border agency, Frontex.

Government officials and financial leaders met at the EU Summit for Sustainable Finance on Thursday (October 7) to discuss current green investment plans and seek common ground, amid worsening climate crisis and gaping inequality.

Muslim leaders' indifference to the Taliban's rollback of women's rights is a slap in the face of millions of empowered Muslim women who are active and full-fledged citizens of their countries.